The Pulpit Is For Preaching

An editorial in The Toledo Blade on political endorsements as a part of a sermon.

NEARLY three dozen pastors in churches in 22 states stuck their toes across the line separating issue advocacy from endorsement of specific candidates a week ago today. Fortunately, their attempt to spark a court battle in hopes of overturning rules prohibiting political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship likely will fail.

They took part in "Pulpit Freedom Sunday" at the urging of the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative legal group based in Arizona that believes the 1954 law that made it illegal for tax-exempt organizations to publicly support or oppose political candidates is unconstitutional.

Why, indeed, should not ministers, priests, rabbis, mullahs, and other religious leaders speak from their pulpits to urge their flocks to support specific candidates? Doesn't the First Amendment protect speech absolutely?

As a matter of fact, the First Amendment does prohibit Congress from making any law "abridging the freedom of speech." But it has also long been recognized that government can treat political and nonpolitical speech differently, limiting the former in ways that it cannot the latter.

Pastors are not being denied the right to endorse candidates. They can take part in whatever political activity they wish outside their churches. They're not even being denied the right to endorse from the pulpit. Instead, limits on politicking from the pulpit are a precondition for maintaining tax-exempt status. Donations to religious organizations are tax deductible, political donations are not.

The purpose of the 1954 law was to prevent religious donors from deducting political donations from their taxes. If they give up their tax-exempt status, religious leaders can use their sermons to endorse anyone they choose, but they are not inclined to do that.

The current restrictions are hardly odious. Pastors can make plain their religious positions on social and moral issues; but they must stop short of naming names.

That is what groups such as ADF want at least Christian churches to be able to do. ADF believes congregants are both stupid and easily influenced by authority figures. It's less clear whether they'd want mullahs and rabbis doing the same thing.

[...]

U.S. religious leaders have a long, positive history of political activism. They also serve the vital functions of promoting voter registration and providing voter information. They can do so, in part, precisely because they honor the line that separates issue advocacy and partisan politics.

As the Rev. Eric Williams, a United Church of Christ minister in Ohio wrote, according to the Washington Post, "The role of the church … and of its religious leaders is to stand apart from government, to prophetically speak truth to power, and to encourage a national dialogue that transcends the divisiveness of electoral politics and preserves for every citizen our 'first liberty.'"

Amen to that.

It's also ironic that these pastors, who demand equal rights to speak out about political matters and say that the tax laws restrict their rights as citizens, have no problem whatsoever in supporting laws and Constitutional amendments that restrict the rights of members of their own congregation who happen to be gay or lesbian.

Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.